Just Another Day at Work

Posted by Dov Nazarov on February 14, 2010

“Workplace challenge? Scoff. Get an office cat.”

Dov juggles between his New York hours and now Madrid, all the while with ridiculous distractions from this furry little critter at Stampede. The partners are yet to agree on a name – to Dov he’s Luke and Shaza Hugo. Dov is the Development Lead at Stampede.

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The Arizona Trip: Part I

Posted by Shaiful Borhan on February 10, 2010

“Clocking 15,000 miles, juggling time-zones, messing up the body clock and hailing snow-balls; the month of January ’10 was amazing, and quite physical too.”

Shaiful Borhan recounts the first leg of his maiden journey to Phoenix, Arizona for a Stampede on-site project. Shaiful is the Web Analyst and Developer at Stampede.

January started magnificently. I spent a week in the wonderful city of Kuching, visiting places such as the Sarawak Cultural Village in Santubong and picking dragon-fruits at my best friend’s little orchard. It is a city with diverse ethnicity background, colorful culture and not to forget, pretty people too. It’s my second time around.

The highlight of the month however, was my trip to Phoenix, AZ. It was a personal invitation from one of our clients – A.J. Brown of Trading Trainer – who wanted me to be on-site for the training and integration of their existing website with a third-party software, Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft is a hosted web-based solution that specializes in email marketing and CRM. It also provides support for e-Commerce and affiliate programs.

This being my first trip to the States, had me drove back and forth to the US embassy in KL as part of the visa application procedures and with the Kuching trip and all, it was pretty tight. Interestingly and well, fortunately too though, I had my visa issued on Friday 23rd at 3pm which was on the same day I was flying. I flew out of KL at 1130pm. Yes, it was pretty tight.

Well hello, Tokyo!

The journey itself was an epic adventure in its own. As you might have guessed it, it was not a direct flight. I bid “sayonara” to KL close to midnight, bound for Narita, Tokyo. (I just have to let my thought out loud on this one though. This is definitely my favorite flight to date, MAS operated 777. Really superb in many ways!).

We reached Japan air space right around 6am. Rolled up the window shades, looked outside and guess what you’d see. Yeah, sunrise in the land of the rising sun right from the cabin! Every second of it was breath-taking. I may not seen a lot of sunrises in my life, but I’m not sure if they can come any better than this one.

The ground temperature at Narita was around -1°C. I’m supposed to board my connecting flight to San Francisco (SFO) here except it was not to leave ground until 10 hours later. Man, I hate long layovers. Thankfully though, they have rooms that weary travelers like me can rent by the hour. I had 5 hours killed. Fast-forward a few hours, and we were all set to board the SFO flight.

This is when it got hairy. I went into the plane and saw my seat was occupied. Little did I realize that I got the wrong boarding pass issued to me while I was checking-in. It was for my other connecting flight, SFO to Phoenix (PHX). Both flights were operated by the same airline, thus the passes look similar. In spite of all the confusion, they still managed to put me onboard in a different seat close to the rear. Well, that’s cool. Kudos to the Narita ground staff for handling the matter professionally, Japanese-style!*

* That is to say very briskly, trying really hard to explain in English with plenty of apologetic gestures.

The San Francisco Connection

The flight was really long. Going back against time, we reached SFO about 12 hours later. The SFO airport is really huge with planes coming in and going out literally every single minute. As active as the air traffic may be, I was there stucked at the Homeland Security gates. For a first timer like myself, plus all the recent developments regarding enhanced security for US bound flights, it’s understandable though. Even so, my connecting flight to PHX is just 2 hours away and by the look of the queue length and speed, I doubt I could make it in time. I texted Shaza to let her know of my little situation so she can relay the news to A.J.

As expected, I missed my PHX flight. I did receive some good news from the security officer that the airline should be able to rebook me on the next flight to Phoenix. What a breather! Well, it’s lunch time in California, and with 2 extra hours to spare, Mexican did the job.

Phoenix, Finally

By the time I touched down in Phoenix, the only thing I had in mind was to get some serious rest. It was a very long day indeed and I was drained. Had a long hot shower and went straight to bed.

To be continued in Part II…

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White Sails and the Sea

Posted by Syazwan Hakim on January 17, 2010

“There’s so much to do, but there’s award ceremony and partying every night at different locations too!”

Syazwan Hakim writes about his first experience with The Royal Langkawi International Regatta. Syazwan is the Front-End Developer at Stampede.

There are so many people with different quirks passing by while I’m enjoying my Expresso Ice-Blended under the Starbucks green canopy. I’m here surfing the web while waiting for the wind. The very first race of Royal Langkawi International Regatta 2010 should have started this morning. But the wind is envious of us. No wind, no sail.

So here I am in Langkawi to cover this event, my first on-site gig since I joined Stampede in May 2009. The Royal Langkawi Yacht Club has been working with Stampede since 2004. Besides design and development for their web presence, we also provide maintenance to their websites all year round. But it all builds up to this 6-day event.

It is exciting to meet our good client and participants to this yacht race. Renee Chung, who is currently responsible for maintaining the yacht club’s website is going to hand over everything to me this April.

The Regatta is an annual, prestigious yacht race with entrants from all over the world. There are 8 different categories: Racing, IRC, Sports, Sports under 25, Multihull, Club Cruising and Ocean Rovers. We have our own Malaysian favorite, the Navy with their racing yacht “Zuhal”. See them all in action in the Regatta photo gallery.

I am stationed at the yacht club itself, in the Regatta’s office. There is a constant blur of yacht owners and volunteers going in and out of the office. Most volunteers are expatriates who live in their boats anchored at the club – some were editing photos of the day, others are preparing newsletters for distribution and those idle ones managed to sneak some time playing games on their laptop. Zack, the Club’s manager, is busy collecting race results while drinking blue can of Revive.

Once the results are all in, Zack will hand them over to me for immediate online updating. The Regatta website is unique because real-time results need to be fed from another system into the website. All kind of media and press from all over the world will refer to the official result that we released. It is very crucial for it to be done accurately and on time. The website maintenance itself doesn’t seem too stressful because it was built on Joomla. Occasionally, new designs are introduced to some part of the website based on client’s request and it is also my responsibility to transfer this design into XHTML and CSS templates that will later be read by Joomla.

During the event itself, my task is to wrap up the day’s race. When the result is confirmed, the newsletter prepared and photos edited, they will all be handed over to me and I will update the website accordingly. There’s so much to do, but there’s award ceremony and partying every night at different locations too!

But until the wind comes, I am happy sitting here, enjoying this cold drink with white sails over blue blue sea in front of me.

(photo courtesy of The Royal Langkawi International Regatta)

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